Lot Essay
This first flight by Gabriel Voisin was taken from the dunes at Merlimont. Flying was a great obsession of Lartigue and his family, especially his older borther Maurice, nicknamed 'Zissou'. Lartigue describes this great fascination in his diary: "There is one thing all of us want to do...it's an idea we all dream and talk about...an idea that Zissou is absolutely obsessed with...to get up in the air! In my sleep I can fly...Zissou, however, does not dream. Zissou invents; he calculates and draws maps. He is preparing himself for the moment when he will be able to lift himself up from the ground and stay in the air. He wants to build a flying machine...he is going to try and fly the way Octave Chanute does. You stand straight up in the flying machine, you run against the wind...you are lifted up in the air and you glide...no, you soar, like a sea gull. Zissou is not discouraged by anything. He is determined to be airborne, to be like a balloon...up there in "the thing that's heavier than air"" (See Lartigue, Diary of a Century).
The cropping lines in this and the following lot were most likely added in the 1960s when books were being published with Lartigue's work.
The cropping lines in this and the following lot were most likely added in the 1960s when books were being published with Lartigue's work.